


Turtles All the Way Down

by TPike



Series: Redacted [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Completely Scientific Jungle Trek, Journal 4, Message in a bottle, Near-Death Experience, Sea Adventures, Stan O' War II, treasure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-08 23:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15254697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TPike/pseuds/TPike
Summary: Another anomaly has appeared on Ford's tracker, popping into existence one early morning on northern waters. He and Stan investigate, finding curious relics begging for further study. There's just something about the island that's a little off...





	1. Letter in a Bottle

Dipper emptied his bookbag onto his desk. Two textbooks, three spiralbound notebooks, eight pens, four mechanical pencils, an eraser, a graphing calculator, a flashlight, and his journal tumbled onto the already cluttered surface. He grabbed his journal and one of the pens, clicking it to life and flipping to his most recent entry.

He was ready. Last week, Great Uncle Ford let slip that they had encountered a wendigo in Ontario, and that they were hunting something in the Barents Sea. He did his research; there was no way that Great Uncle Ford or Grunkle Stan cold hide anything about their adventure from him. Maybe he could even figure out what they were hiding in Journal 4. They had promised no more secrets. Did they think he couldn’t handle whatever they had encountered? He’d fought Bill, twice—there couldn’t possibly be anything worse than that pointy jerk.

They would tell him. No more secrets. Now, if Mabel would hurry up, they could call—

His sister’s exuberant squeal echoed from downstairs. He barely heard his mother chastise her for running in the house beneath Mabel’s heavy footsteps thumping up the stairs. She burst into their shared room a moment later.

“Mabel—”

She let loose another excited exclamation and stomped her feet.

Dipper sighed. “Mabel, seriously?”

Inhaling deeply, she screamed again as loud as her powerful lungs would allow.

“Mabel!” Dipper threw a pillow at her face, silencing her. “Okay, enough already. What are you even shouting about, anyway?”

Mabel tossed the pillow and her bookbag aside and flew to her brother’s desk. She waggled a green bottle in his face. “I got another letter from Mermando!” Beaming, she tugged at the cork. “I sent him pictures of the street we sweaterbombed over Christmas break, and the adorable little hats and scarves we knitted for the squirrels in the park, and I told him all about the sheep we liberated from the farm—”

“You weren’t supposed to tell anyone about that—”

She blew a raspberry at him. “Oh, please, it’s just Mermando. Who’s he gonna tell, the sea cows?”

“…I guess.” He frowned. “But don’t tell anyone else! I won’t be able to make the Monster Hunting Club if they think I’m some kind of delinquent.”

Mabel rolled her eyes. “I told you, just break into Principal Howard’s apartment. He can’t possibly say no then!”

Dipper shook his head. “Okay, Mabel, focus. We need to get Great Uncle Ford to tell us why he keeps marking out stuff in his journal, and we need to be totally focused and—Mabel?”

His sister had thrown herself onto her bed, sending a poof of glitter into the air, absorbed in the letter she finally freed from its glass prison.

“Mabel!”

“Yeah, yeah, Dippin’ Dots, I heard.” She didn’t look up from the paper. “I’m sure it’s nothing, Dipper. You scribble stuff out of your journal all the time. Maybe Grunkle Ford is just crossing out stuff because he thinks it’s dumb or he’s wrong about something or some junk like that.”

“But he’s always so secretive about it.” Dipper clicked the pen a few times. “And so is Grunkle Stan. They’re totally hiding something.” Mindlessly, he chewed on the end of his pen. “What could it possibly be? Do you think it’s about—?”

“Not every bad thing is about Bill.” Groaning, Mabel rolled over and gestured to her brother’s computer. “Just pull up the thing so we can call them already. It’s, like, stupid early over there and they’ve got stuff to do and junk…”

After turning on his computer, Dipper flopped back into his chair. “I just don’t get why they’d be hiding anything, after everything that happened last summer…”

Mabel didn’t answer, focused on the message again.

With a few clicks, Dipper brought up the video chat and called their great uncles. “Come on, Mabel, they usually pick up quickly.”

While Mabel scrambled to the other side of the room, the video chat picked up. It was only Stan, yawning and stretching in the cabin of the Stan o’ War II, still half-asleep.

“Waking up is the worst part of the day,” he grumbled as he ran a hand through his hair. Catching sight of Dipper, he smiled. “Hey, kid, what’s the word?”

“Nothing, really. I got the highest score on my biology exam.” Dipper couldn’t help but beam.

“That’s great—”

“Hey Grunkle Stan!” Mabel tackled Dipper to get at the screen. “Guess what? I got a letter from Mermando today! And Waddles’ taxi license came in, too!”

Stan shook his head. “That pig can’t even reach the pedals—how does he drive?”

“I made him little boots with wood blocks.”

Stan wasn’t impressed. “Who even let him take a driving test, anyway?”

Dipper shoved his sister off of him. “The guy wasn’t really…uh…I don’t know that he had his own license…and he seemed a little…off…”

“Figures. Who else would give a pig a license?” The humor in Stan’s expression faded slightly as he leaned back in his chair to call out to a different part of the cabin, off-screen. “Hey, Sixer, you coming or what? How long does it take to make coffee?”

“I’ve got it!” Ford’s triumphant call was strangely quiet through the video chat. He appeared on screen a moment later, holding out his journal. “The solution to our problem—I’ve got it right here.”

“Your diary is gonna make me coffee?”

“What problem, Great Uncle Ford?” Dipper leaned closer to the monitor, his pen clicking. “It is some kind of monster? I’ve been doing some research, and—”

“Huh?” Startled, Ford glanced to the computer screen; he lost much of the wild look in his eyes when he registered where the voice had originated. He adjusted his glasses, hemming, and righted himself. “Ah. I didn’t realize you’d already called. Greetings, children.”

The younger twins waved to the camera.

“Good morning, Great Uncle Ford!”

“Hey Grunkle Ford!”

“So, what problem are you having? Is there anything we can do to help?” Excited, Dipper scooted even closer, nudging Mabel out of the way. “Is it some kind of ghost or restless spirit?”

Ford blinked, confused. “What? Oh, um, well…”

Stan rolled his eyes. “What Poindexter wants to say is that we haven’t had any interesting or cool problems. Just having some trouble adjusting to the weird daylight hours up here.” He vaguely gestured around him. “We were trying to figure out what to do about that, is all. Wouldn’t be so much of a problem if someone—” he looked pointedly to his brother “—would just make coffee when he got up.”

Ford scoffed. “You’re a grown man, Stanley, you can make your own coffee.”

“How are you gonna make yourself coffee and then expect me to make my own? Just make enough for two people at once—or just stop drinking the whole pot on your own.” Stan yawned. “Speaking of which, did you make coffee, or just pull everything out of the cabinet and then get distracted with your diary?”

“It’s brewing, Stanley,” Ford grumbled as he sat down. He dropped the journal on the desk, jarring the webcam for a moment. With a brighter expression, he turned to the twins in the video chat. “How have you been, children?”

“I got a letter from Mermando today!” Mabel made to scream again, only refraining because Dipper jabbed her in the side. “He says they’re going to visit the ruins of Atlantis this summer, and that we should visit him there!”

Dipper huffed. “That’s just a joke, Mabel. Atlantis isn’t real.”

Ford hummed. “While there’s not much definitive literature on the subject, there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence supporting Atlantis’ existence. I’ve spoken to a few mermaids about it before—they’re pretty secretive about its location, but they all seem to agree that it’s somewhere near the Mediterranean.”

“Sounds like a good place to spend the summer,” Stan said. “Y’know, somewhere _warm_.”

“Yes, yes.” Ford waved off his brother’s veiled complaint. “We’ll summer somewhere warm. I was thinking Belize—”

“What did I tell you about South America, Sixer? Not happening.”

“Are we just going to ignore that Atlantis is real?” Dipper glanced between his great uncles and his sister, none of whom seemed remotely concerned. “I have so many questions—”

Mabel’s phone chimed obnoxiously. She checked the message and frowned. “Dang it. Mom says dinner is ready.” She snagged Dipper by the arm, dragging him from the computer despite his protests. “Bye Grunkle Stan! Bye Grunkle Ford!”

“Bye, kids!”

* * *

 

Apparently, forty years of caffeine dependency hadn’t taught Ford how to make a decent cup of coffee. If anything, he seemed to be trying to make each cup uniquely bad. It was weak today, and burnt, and overly sweet. Perhaps Ford couldn’t actually _taste_ it anymore. Stan considered complaining about it, but, he supposed, he could have made it himself if he didn’t want terrible coffee.

“As I was saying earlier, I’ve found the solution to our problem.” Ford placed his mug on the table and grabbed his journal. “It’s so simple—I can’t believe it was even an issue in the first place. Behold!” He flipped to a random page and held it up for his brother to see.

Stan adjusted his glasses, leaned forward, and read the entry on the ghost pirates. “I don’t get it, Sixer, what am I beholding here? I was there for this.”

Flipping through a few more pages, Ford watched Stan’s expression. “Notice anything? Anything different?”

“No.” Stan’s brow raised slightly. “Your diary is going to stop you from writing incriminating things in your diary?”

“ _Journal_ , Stanley, it’s a journal—how are you not seeing this?” Sighing, Ford shoved the book at his brother. “Hold this.” Ford rummaged in his coat for a moment, eventually withdrawing another journal. He opened to a random page covered in ink and scribbles. “Now do you see?”

Stan glanced between the journal in his hands and the one his brother held. “A copy, huh?”

Ford nodded. “Completely sanitized. Everything that was left unharmed, originally, has been perfectly transposed, eliminating the suspicious redactions. The kids will only see the censored version, and I’ll be able to keep my journal as I please.” He pulled the original journal to himself, glossing over the inky mess of a page. “Perhaps I can even retrieve the lost material…”

“Huh.” Passingly, Stan reviewed the copy journal. All of the offending information had been eliminated, as had all references to the redacted sections. “And I assume you have a plan to make sure the kids can’t find _your_ journal?”

“Naturally.” Gesturing for Stan to follow, Ford went to their bunk beds. He ducked beneath Stan’s bunk, shoving as much of himself as he could fit beneath the lower mattress, and removed one of the floorboards. A small cubby had been revealed, just large enough to stow a book. “I can’t imagine a reason for the kids to be under here in the first place, but the board fits perfectly back in place, even with the journal inside. Unless they know to look for it, they should never find it.”

“You don’t know much about kids, do you, Poindexter? But, I guess I wouldn’t expect them to try prying up floorboards randomly, so it should be okay.” After a moment, Stan frowned, perturbed. “How long has this been under here?”

“I built it in about a week ago. Originally, I thought to simply hide the journal here, but then I worried that Dipper would find it if he weren’t permitted to read something…”

“Not sure how you managed that without me noticing, but whatever.” After finagling himself out from under his bunk, Stan smirked. “See, Poindexter? I told you you’d come up with something.”

“Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but it should prove effective.” Ford replaced the floor panel and extricated himself from the small space. “Pleased, Stanley?”

“Until the next time you do something stupid, sure.” Content, Stan returned to his chair. Somehow, as his lackluster coffee cooled, it became worse—all part of the mystery of his brother’s coffee sorcery. He, again, chose not to complain.

“The confidence you have in me is deeply heartening.” Ford moved toward his chair, taking only a step before becoming distracted. “Is that the anomaly tracker?” He didn’t wait for his brother to answer; Ford darted immediately to the table and knocked most of his things off of it as he tried to find the device. Beneath the real and copy journals, he found the beeping tracker. His face brightened. “Oh, it’s nearby!”

“What’s nearby?”

“I don’t know!” Beaming, Ford glanced up from the screen. “But it’s so close! We should encounter it in an hour or so.” He putzed with the device’s buttons. “It won’t even be out of our way. It seems to be directly in our charted course.”

Stan ran a hand over his face. “So, some weird something just popped into existence directly in front of us, and we were just gonna sail right into it, huh?”

“Well, not directly into it, it’s a bit north of us—but, yes, it did just ‘pop into existence,’ as a matter of fact.” Ford returned his attention to the tracker. “Fascinating, though. I wonder what it is…”

Sighing, Stan peered into his mug. “I’m gonna need better coffee for this.”


	2. Here Be Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stan and Ford investigate the new anomaly.

Stan hated that it was still cold. The island was notably green—far greener than any of the tundra they had seen throughout the past couple of months—and he had assumed that would have meant that the weather might be tepid, if not warm. Must’ve been spoiled by all those other randomly-appearing, mysterious islands they’d encountered. He pulled his cap down, wrapped his scarf tighter, and followed his brother away from the Stan o’ War II.

They trekked uphill. Ford, somehow, seemed not to notice, too enthralled with his tracker and the increasingly dense forestry. Stan had only the minor distraction of making sure neither he nor his brother tripped over any of the organic debris; at least, he consoled himself, the wind wasn’t so biting through the trees.

Their boots crunched against the twigs and rocks, out of sync with each other and the persistent beeping of Ford’s anomaly tracker. The device had gone haywire the moment they stepped onto the island; no matter where they walked, it beeped with the same intensity. It had done nothing to direct them so far. As Stan began to wonder why and how Ford was using the thing, his brother groaned.

“Useless.” He huffed and clicked a couple of buttons, silencing the tracker’s incessant noise. “I don’t know why I haven’t made a superior device in all this time.”

“It’s part of the adventure,” Stan reminded.

“Ah, yes, well, perhaps some of that adventure must be sacrificed to avoid wasting our time.” Ford finally looked up from the tracker. “Terribly inefficient. I suppose we’ll have to rely on our natural pathfinding skills to find what we seek.”

Stan shrugged. “Not the first time I’ve trekked through a jungle without much direction.”

“Perhaps you’d like to take the helm, as it were?” Ford gestured vaguely to the surrounding forestry. “Which way?”

“Hm.” Stan stroked his beard, momentarily distracted by the thought that he should shave. “If I were a weird thing, where would I be…?”

Ford snorted. “How utterly scientific.”

“Did you want me to lead or not?”

“Go ahead, don’t let my trepidation inhibit you.” As he watched his brother mindlessly search their surroundings, he found himself wishing he’d spent more time exploring the rainforests of Deodato-85—or, really, any interdimensional jungles, just so he wouldn’t have to rely on Stan’s hapless guess. Then again, he didn’t particularly relish the thought of dealing with the native cannibals any more than required.

“That way,” Stan finally decided, pointing to his left. “I got a good feeling about this direction.”

Ford acquiesced, making a passing note of the morning sun’s position in the east before following his brother into the lush underbrush. Now that the responsibility for the adventure rested with his brother (who had a surprising grace in moving about the foliage), he found himself inspecting the flora with a far more critical eye. It was colorful. Bright. Vibrant. Tropical, even. The Arctic breeze that occasionally blew only served to make the displaced biome more curious.

“You know what the best part about this weird island being so cold is?”

“What’s that, Stanley?”

“No mosquitos.” Stan laughed. “I ever tell you how I nearly died of malaria once?”

Curiosity caught in his throat as Ford registered the full sentence. “Wait, what?”

“I think I was in Panama. Maybe it was Honduras? Or, uh, Belize?” Pausing in both his movements and his story, Stan rubbed at the back of his neck. “No, it was Nicaragua—well, it was Central America, anyway. South America? Definitely Central America. I think? Uh…”

“You were in the tropics, at any rate,” Ford provided. “Somewhere, assumedly, where one could catch malaria.”

“Yeah.” Free of his hesitation, Stan plodded on, slightly akimbo to the path he had been on. “And this was early in my days working for Rico, so I was, what, twenty-three? Twenty-five?”

“You were young.”

“Yeah. What was I doing? Smuggling something, probably. I think I was only smuggling pugs at that time.” Stan shrugged. “Could’ve been drugs or guns or knock-off genuine alpaca ponchos—”

“You were involved with some sort of illicit trade.”

“Yeah. I was getting eaten alive by those mosquitos—I must’ve been itching for a month solid. But, one day, I got real sick. Fever, vomiting, exhaustion, the works. I was just gonna ignore it, since I didn’t have the time to ‘relax’ or ‘get better’ or whatever. Well, funny thing was, I couldn’t move the next day, so I didn’t really have the chance to ignore it.”

Ford groaned. “Stanley, please tell me you saw a qualified medical professional, got the proper medication, and recovered in a healthy way?”

“Nah, but I had a dream that I did.” Without checking to see if his brother followed, Stan wantonly shifted their route again. “I slept in a tree by the river until the fever went down enough that I could keep going. A bat almost knocked me out of it once.”

“You’re incredibly lucky to have survived.”

Stan snorted. “Says the guy who had a metal plate installed in his head by some interdimensional Sherpa.” He brushed aside another fern, revealing an expansive clearing. Ruins of an unknown civilization glistered in the midday sun.

Whatever the prepared reprimand was, it died before Ford could speak it. Instead, he gaped at the site with hushed awe.

“Told you I could find it, whatever it is,” Stan gloated. He gestured for Ford to follow him. “C’mon, Sixer, let’s go look for treasure.”

The older twin trailed behind his exuberant brother. With the looming potential for treasure, giddiness overtook Stan and guided him helter-skelter through the glittering ruins. Ford lingered around the nearest structure, fascinated.

It was a wall—a piece of a wall, at least; despite towering over him, the wall appeared to be a small part of a much larger something, the rest of which might have become the unidentifiable structures scattered about the clearing. Thinly woven through the wall’s degrading black rock was a coppery, goldish metal. The wire spiraled elegantly in some places and bent geometrically in others, exposing the rock as the cames would stained glass. Something about the metalwork reminded him of ancient mosaics.

Unconsciously, as he investigated the thing, he scratched at the rock, picking out crumbling pieces. When a sizeable chunk came out of the wall, he turned it over in his hand, rolling it between his fingers like a thirty-two-sided die. Flecks of light-colored sand rubbed off of it.

“Huh.” Still toying with the strange rock (he’d have to run some tests to determine just what type of stone it was, perhaps obsidian?), Ford strolled to another nearby ruin.

Like the first, it was a wall, or, at least, had once been a wall. Metal wove through stone with similar grace and form, though the materials were different: instead of (potentially) obsidian, the stone was white; the metal was brass. When he picked at this structure, too, a chunk of marble popped out; the same light-colored sand rubbed off onto his hands.

“Hey! Sixer! Over here! I found something!”

Ford abandoned the pale wall, moving through the clearing toward his brother’s voice. He eyed the other structures—pieces of walls, chunks of foundations, things that might belong on spires, all made of the steadily decaying stones and metal wiring—until he located the only full construction: a small, square building of red stone and grey cames. Through the open space where a door once stood and the places where windows once rested, Ford saw his brother kneeling beside something that, initially, appeared to be a simple box.

Of course, it _was_ a box, surprisingly unmarred by the ravages of time, roughly one cubit long by one cubit wide by one cubit high. Large tiles decorated with faded mythologic episodes adorned the sides of the container. Visible between the cracks in the ceramic was the tin base.

Stan beamed up at his brother. “Treasure!”

The excitement infected Ford, too. “Open it!”

“What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?” Stan attempted to pull the container open. When that didn’t work, he searched his pockets for a thin blade; with it, he tried to pry the lid.

“Don’t!” Ford grabbed his brother’s hand. “Don’t break it.”

Rolling his eyes, Stan relented. He prodded at the lock experimentally and, when the box remained nonresponsive, he sighed. “I’ll need my picks.”

“You left them on the Stan o’ War?”

“Why would I have brought them onto some uninhabited, magical island?” Stan pushed himself to his feet. “Look, Poindexter, we’ll just bring it back to the boat. Then I can open it under your supervision so you don’t freak out about me hurting it, okay?”

Folding his arms, Ford nodded. “Very well. I would like to study its exterior. Something about the artwork seems…off.”

“If you say so.” Stan grabbed the box, hefting it with a groan. “This thing is way heavier than it looks.”

“It’s not that far to the boat.” Ford smirked. “Unless, of course, you’re too old and feeble. I suppose I could see my way to assisting you, if you were to so require.”

“I know exactly what you’re doing, Sixer, and it ain’t gonna work.” After shifting the way he held the box, Stan trudged out of the ruin. “Now, unless you want to see what horrors this place has for us after dark, I suggest we head back.” He continued toward the trees, reaching the edge of the clearing before his brother called for his attention.

“It’s the other way, Stanley.”

* * *

 

The trek through the lifeless jungle took only slightly less time than it had that morning. Ford swore they would have returned faster had his brother not been hauling around that hefty box; Stan claimed that his brother got lost and led them in circles for most of the afternoon.

“The island isn’t big enough for it to take us hours to cross. Plus, we passed the same tree three times.”

“You have no concept of the size of this island—you’re the one who led us in an erratic, rambling path to the clearing in the first place. Aside, how can you even tell it’s the same tree?”

“And _that_ is why we were lost all day.” Stan dropped the mysterious container on the cabin’s desk. “There better be something good in this thing.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage to break into it quickly enough,” Ford assured. “Before you get too comfortable with your treasure, we’ll need to check the rigging on deck. Never know what sort of creature will mess with that sort of thing when you aren’t looking. And, for much the same reason, it may be prudent to move the Stan o’ War II a little further out from the island for our overnight surveillance.”

“Yeah, sure.” Stretching, Stan headed back to the cabin door. “The one time you wanna take precautions is the one time we haven’t seen anything. Makes sense.”

Ford followed. “The very fact that we haven’t seen anything should put you on your guard, I would think.”

“Maybe.” Flicking on the flood lights, Stan glanced back at his brother. “But, y’know, some of us get to enjoy the luxury of total silence whenever we want.” He tapped at the piece in his ear with a laugh.

While Ford had his doubts about how much silence his twin really enjoyed, he couldn’t help but chuckle at the joke. “Perhaps that’s the difference.”

By this point, simple tasks—maintaining the rigging, adjusting the position of the Stan o’ War II, anchoring her in place for the night, etc., etc.—had taken on habits that bordered on ritual for the twins. They had a way of moving about their work and each other that required no discussion, allowing for other conversation, comfortable quiet, or the occasional shanty (Ford acquiesced to joining Stan only after thorough convincing, and even now he insisted on pretending he didn’t enjoy it). That night, over the shush of the unseasonably placid water and the hum of the weak wind, Stan whistled as he worked.

An old wives’ tale said that whistling on the seas was bad luck, as it would summon terrible squalls. It was one among many of Stan’s borderline blasphemous sailing sins. Ford picked his battles with his brother, and this was not one of them; aside, he often found that he quite liked it.

As he unbound the anchor, Ford imagined he heard a faint clicking beneath his brother’s whistling. He checked the rope in his hand and the pulley on which it was wound, searching for any signs of weakness; finding none, he continued his task. He wound the winch, pulling in the anchor, and again heard the clicks. An investigation of the gear, again, yielded nothing.

“Where is that coming from?” Baffled, Ford glanced around the deck. Stan stood near the cabin, checking the trawl; as neither seemed to be moving, Ford surmised that neither had made any sound, beyond the continued whistling. “Stanley, what is that clicking?”

“What clicking?”

The pair paused, listening. Somewhere to his left, toward the bow, Ford was sure the noise originated. Now that he really listened, it sounded muffled. “That one!”

Stan shook his head. “I don’t hear anything, Poindexter.”

“But—”

“Did you hoist the anchor?”

“Yes, but—”

“Great. Then come check the rigging; I’m gonna move the boat.”

“Not too far. I don’t want to be looking through the binoculars all night again.”

Stan waved off his brother’s concern as he headed for the helm. “Wouldn’t have that problem if you weren’t staying up all night in the first place.”

As his brother steered the boat away from the island, Ford moved toward the bow. The clicking noise was louder here, though still muffled, as if coming up from the depths. He considered that the sound might be some manner of cetacean; he could swear that it was still too early in the year for the mammals to have returned to northern waters, but perhaps he was wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. For that matter, he wasn’t even sure he really was hearing these sounds. If only it weren’t so dark, he could just _confirm_ such queries with his eyes.

“Hey, Poindexter, get ready with the anchor—”

“Are you sure you can’t hear that clicking?”

Stan huffed. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I swear, Stanley, if this is another of your hearing aid jokes—”

“If my hearing aid was off, I wouldn’t be able to hear you talking to me.”

Ford hemmed. “Ah…yes…I suppose so…”

“Now quit slacking off and do something, wouldja?” The remainder of Stan’s disgruntled response became too quiet for Ford to hear far out on the deck.

Begrudgingly, Ford left the bow and returned to the anchor. He finagled with the winch, still perturbed by the unresolved clicking noise, when came a rumbling from beneath; far, far below their boat, down in the depths, something shuddered, and the whole ocean trembled. For a brief moment, Ford recalled the tales of an eldritch nightmare slumbering at the bottom of the sea, and true horror of the sound that had been haunting him all evening manifested deep within him.

It was further away than it had been when the clicking started; now, with an unearthly groaning and vicious quakes, the island descended into the waves. Caught in the wake, neither twin saw what exactly had pulled the island under.


	3. Redacted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peek inside Journal 4.

_Anomaly 136: The Sinking Isle_

_Still traveling on our western route across the north (I believe we’ve passed into the Norwegian Sea at this point, but such demarcations mean nothing on open waters), S and I have encountered another occasionally present island. For whatever reason, my anomaly tracker seems to be particularly fond of such places, though I do wonder how many times it’s led us to the same island in different locations._

_This one was different, of that I’m sure. Unlike all the other mysterious islands we’ve encountered in these northern waters, the lush vegetation here was distinctly sub-tropical in origin, hardy palms and olive trees and colorful lilies and ferns and such. Thankfully, no cannibals._

A note on the side of the page, in Stan’s hand, read: _Maybe don’t put the cannibal-related comments into the other journal._

_For that matter, aside from Stanley and myself, there were no signs of any life whatsoever. Not even a mosquito! Every other disappearing landmass we’ve encountered has had some manner of fauna—magical or otherwise, native or transient—but nothing here. Not a single living thing (save the plants, I suppose, though I never gave them sufficient attention to confirm that they were, indeed, alive). I didn’t even register the lack of living creatures until much later in the day, as S and I made our return to the Stan o’ War II with our treasure—ah, but, I get ahead of myself too much._

_It wasn’t the island’s lack of life that made it so curious. Thanks to Stanley’s peculiar intuition, we discovered some mysterious ruins; they appeared to be enormous chunks of some grander construction, and the craftsmanship! Imagine if the Great Wall of China were made like stained glass, but replace the glass with perfectly smooth, glossy stone. (Admittedly, the walls as they are now are pithy and cracked in places, as my samples show, but I imagine such deterioration to be the result of natural erosion.) Could they be remnants of some ancient, lost civilization?_

_We hadn’t the time to truly examine the ruins, as the hour grew late and, at that time, we worried for what creatures may lurk in the darkness. However, we did return with some souvenirs from the trek; I brought my samples from the ruins, and S found a box of some sort._

Stan’s handwriting graffitied the margins again. _It’s a treasure chest, Sixer! I finally found treasure!_

_It seems to be a tin lockbox, 18 inches long, 15 inches high, and 15 inches wide (not far off from my cubit estimations made at first sight). Ceramic or porcelain tiles cover each side, save the bottom, where the slightly-oxidized tin most prominently shows. While they show some signs of age, the tempera has remained vivid. Each side shows an episode of mythology, exquisitely executed with a skill exceeding that of even the greatest ancient masters. I may not be an expert on Mediterranean mythology, but, between my hobbyist knowledge of astronomy and my Ph.D. in Medieval Manuscripts, you would think that I would be able to recognize at least **one** of these images. I do not recognize a single image on this box! Not a one!_

Again, Stan’s handwriting graced the page. _Stanford Pines, not knowing something? Not possible._

_I would venture to guess that uncovering the mysteries of these images would provide further insight to the ruins we uncovered, and whatever civilization spawned them. Knowing that might even allow us to glean what may hide inside this box._

_(For nearly three days now, S has struggled to unlock it. Every time he tries, he loses or breaks his lockpick. He swears it’s “eating” them, but I have my doubts.)_

Stan’s aside read, _It IS eating them, Sixer,_ to which Ford responded, _It’s a **box** , Stanley, it can’t eat!_

_However mysterious this lockbox is, it is not the anomaly that this entry intends to cover—that would be the isle itself. For, as we returned to the Stan o’ War II and made preparations for our overnight surveillance, the island sank into the ocean. Not a slow, cautious descent, nor a gradual sinking, but a sudden and horrific dive beneath the waves. Fortunately, we had already put some distance between us and the island; if not for that and Stanley’s masterful helmsmanship, we would have surely been taken in the undertow and would now be resting at the bottom of the ocean._

For the last time in the entry, Stan’s handwriting made an appearance: _My greatness notwithstanding, you should probably cut that out of the other journal, too. Don’t want the kids to think we’re getting into too much danger out here._

_In rereading my entry on this place thus far, I have formulated a potential theory to explain some of the isle’s more curious features—particularly, its completely climate-inappropriate flora, its lack of fauna, and the rapidity with which it descended. Various creatures of similar description exist in most earthly cultures, but I’ll draw from my formal schooling for the particular selection I present here._

_Aspidochelone, while having a few different descriptors depending on which bestiary you choose, are typically enormous turtles that appear as sailors to islands, with sandy beaches, lush forests, high mountains, and deep valleys. Based on the size of the “isle” we encountered, if it were an aspidochelone, I would estimate it to be a juvenile. Defining the mysterious island as a living creature would also answer questions about its movements and its sudden appearance on the anomaly detector, and potentially go a long way to explaining the strange ruins and frustrating clicking noises that preceded its descent into the waters. Perhaps these are remnants from some mer-person society. I must find a way to investigate!_


End file.
